საიდან სად მიხვედი ამ დასკვნამდე არ ვიცი.
მარა ფაქტია, პოლიტკორექტულობა გახდა იარაღი რომ ლევაკმა იტენელქტუალებმა და ძალაუფლებაში მყოფმა ხალხმა უბრალო ხალხს პირი აუკრას.
დიდი პოსტია და დავასპოილერებ მარა ვისაც აინტერესებს ნახეთ ამერიკელი ქოც მთავრობის გეგმები
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-non-covid-...inion_lead_pos1The Biden White House is pointing to polls showing that its $1.9 trillion spending bill is popular, and the press corps is cheering. Yet we wonder how much public support there’d be if Americans understood that most of the blowout is a list of longtime Democratic spending priorities flying under the false flag of Covid-19 relief.
Let’s dig into the various House committee bills to separate the Covid from the chaff. The Covid cash includes some $75 billion for vaccinations, treatments, testing and medical supplies. There’s also $19 billion for “public health,” primarily for state health departments and community health centers. One might even count the $6 billion to the Indian Health Service, or $4 billion for mental health.
The package also hands more to businesses and individuals most hit by lockdowns. That includes $7.2 billion more for the Paycheck Protection Program, $15 billion for economic injury disaster loans, $26 billion for restaurants, bars and live venues, and $15 billion in payroll support for airlines. The recipients of this taxpayer money will at least be required to prove economic harm, and in some cases repay loans.
Not so the recipients of the $413 billion in checks Democrats intend to send to households far and wide, at $1,400 per man, woman and dependent, that begins phasing out at $75,000 of individual income. The Congressional Budget Office says the bill’s unemployment provisions will increase deficits by $246 billion, and that its $400 a week in federal “enhanced” unemployment benefits through August “could increase the unemployment rate as well as decrease labor force participation.” So much for economic stimulus.
All told, this generous definition of Covid-related provisions tallies some $825 billion. The rest of the bill—more than $1 trillion—is a combination of bailouts for Democratic constituencies, expansions of progressive programs, pork, and unrelated policy changes.
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• Start with the $350 billion for state and local governments and cities and counties, even as state revenues have largely recovered since the spring. Democrats also changed the funding formula to ensure most of the dollars go to blue states that imposed strict economic lockdowns.
Last year’s Cares Act distributed money mainly by state population, but much of the $220 billion for states in the new bill will be allocated based on average unemployment over the three-month period ending in December. Andrew Cuomo’s New York (8.2% unemployment in December) and Gavin Newsom’s California (9%) get rewarded for crushing their businesses, while Kristi Noem’s South Dakota (3%) is penalized for staying open. These windfalls come with few strings attached.
• The bill includes $86 billion to rescue 185 or so multiemployer pension plans insured by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. Managed jointly by employer sponsors and unions, these plans are chronically underfunded due to lax federal standards and accounting rules. Yet the bailout comes with no real reform.
• Elementary and secondary schools get another $129 billion, whether they reopen for classroom learning or not. Higher education gets $40 billion. The CBO notes that since Congress already provided some $113 billion for schools—and as “most of those funds remain to be spent”—it expects that 95% of this new money will be spent from 2022 through 2028. That is, when the pandemic is over.
• Enormous sums go to expanding favorite Democratic programs. The package adds $35 billion to pump up subsidies to defray ObamaCare premiums. The bill eliminates the existing income cap (400% of the poverty level) on who qualifies for subsidies, and lowers the maximum amount participants are expected to contribute to about 8.5% of their income, down from 10%.
The bill also spends $15 billion to provide a temporary five percentage-point increase in the federal Medicaid match to states that expand eligibility to lower-income adults. This is bait for the dozen or so states that have resisted ObamaCare’s Medicaid expansion, which enrolls working age, childless adults above the poverty line. The political goal overall is to chip away at private coverage on the way to Medicare for All.
• There’s $39 billion for child care; $30 billion for public transit agencies; $19 billion in rental assistance; $10 billion in mortgage help; $4.5 billion for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance program; $3.5 billion for the program formerly known as food stamps; $1 billion for Head Start; $1.5 billion for Amtrak; $50 billion for the Federal Emergency Management Agency; $4 billion to pay off loans of “socially disadvantaged” farmers and ranchers; and nearly $1 billion in world food assistance.
• Don’t forget the $15 an hour minimum wage, which CBO estimates will cost 1.4 million jobs. The bill increases the child tax credit to $3,000 from $2,000 ($99 billion) and temporarily expands the Earned Income Tax Credit to certain additional childless adults ($25 billion). It eliminates the cap on the rebate that drug makers must pay Medicaid for outpatient drugs. This is a rare provision that increases federal revenue ($16 billion), though only by undermining pharmaceutical innovation.
• This being Congress, Members are also slipping in pet causes. Our favorite is $1.5 million for the Seaway International Bridge, which connects New York to Canada and is a priority for New York Sen. Chuck Schumer. And don’t overlook the nearly $500 million for, as the CBO puts it, “grants to fund activities related to the arts, humanities, libraries and museums, and Native American language preservation.”
No wonder Democrats want to pass all this on a partisan vote. It’s a progressive blowout for the ages that does little for the economy but will finance Democratic interest groups for years.
Please don’t call it Covid relief.https://www.wsj.com/articles/bidens-stimulu...inion_lead_pos5ეს რომნის სტატიაა
Democrats are anxious for any excuse to blow up the Senate filibuster, the last procedural hurdle to one-party government. Their latest is that Republicans oppose the president’s $1.9 trillion stimulus package. Despite having passed five bipartisan Covid-19 relief bills to date—including one barely seven weeks ago—they claim our opposition demonstrates historic intransigence.
No, it demonstrates that the $1.9 trillion bill is a clunker. It would waste hundreds of billions of dollars, do nothing meaningful to get kids back to school, and enact policies that work against job creation. The Congressional Budget Office’s recent analysis of the plan found that more than a third of the proposed funding—$700 billion—wouldn’t be spent until 2022 or later, undermining the administration’s claim that the massive price tag is justified for urgent pandemic-related needs.
The Biden stimulus is unsound economic policy. High unemployment isn’t the result of too little money in American pockets; it’s because of the pandemic. Sending out checks won’t get consumers back into restaurants, bars, salons, malls, hotels or airplanes. Near-record levels of savings are evidence that consumers are able to spend. When Covid is finally in the rearview mirror, they will come roaring back. Congress should target assistance to those who need it and help speed the delivery of vaccines—not borrow hundreds of billions more to check items off a political wish list, deepening the nation’s debt and risking inflation.
The bill is also filled with bad policies and sloppy math. It calls for $350 billion for states and localities. If you live in New York, you might think that sounds about right because the pandemic severely exacerbated your state’s existing financial woes. But New York is the exception. Florida hasn’t even had to dip into its rainy-day fund. California has a multibillion-dollar surplus. Utah’s revenues rose by double digits.
JP Morgan found that 21 states had revenue increases in 2020. Other states drew on rainy-day funds—which is what they are there for. Only a few are in severe financial distress. The same is true of cities and counties: Some are hurting, but the great majority aren’t. Most local tax revenue comes from property taxes, which are far less volatile than sales or income taxes. Sending out hundreds of billions of dollars to states and localities regardless of need is both wasteful and harmful. It would create incentives for the mismanagement that got some states into fiscal trouble in the first place.
Extending federal supplemental unemployment benefits beyond March 14 is a good idea that merits bipartisan support. But the Biden stimulus calls for checks of $400 a week in addition to state checks through September. At that level, the majority of the unemployed would make more by not working. Employers already complain that they can’t find employees.
The Biden stimulus calls for $170 billion for education yet has no realistic plan to reopen K-12 schools. Further, of the $80 billion Congress has already authorized for education, $68 billion hasn’t yet been used by schools and universities. Stunningly, the CBO says only 4% of the K-12 spending in the Biden bill would occur in 2021 and that some education and labor funds would remain unspent in 2029, after a potential Biden second term. If the administration is unable to make good on its commitment to get students back in classrooms five days a week in his first 100 days, the unspent money should be given directly to students and parents to spend on tuition at schools that are open or on tutors, summer programs or home-school efforts. We can’t let unreasonable demands by teachers unions keep schools closed that can safely reopen.
Senate Republicans will support whatever is needed to expand Covid testing, accelerate vaccine delivery and support health providers. We will likewise support robust assistance for those who have been crushed financially by the pandemic, including by losing their jobs. A group of us proposed a $618 billion compromise measure that matched President Biden’s proposed health and vaccine funding, extended enhanced federal unemployment benefits, provided economic relief for those with the greatest need, and included nutrition funding, small-business assistance, and resources to get children safely back to school.
We stand ready to negotiate a plan that helps America recover, both physically and financially, from this dread disease. We are willing to compromise in an attempt to get the administration to come down from its ill-considered $1.9 trillion plan and instead provide need-based relief. We have shown a willingness to compromise—which the president and Democratic congressional leaders have yet to reciprocate.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-beijing-lo...inion_lead_pos2The U.S. officially rejoined the Paris climate accord on Friday to much media and European applause. Our guess is that China is the most pleased because it knows the accord will restrict American energy while Beijing gets a decade-long free ride.
Paris is a voluntary agreement, and nations submit their own commitments to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. The Obama Administration vowed to slash emissions 26% or more from 2005 levels by 2025, but the Trump Administration withdrew from the accord. President Biden has now pledged to reach “net-zero emissions no later than 2050.”
Like Mr. Obama, Mr. Biden is committing the U.S. without submitting the Paris agreement to the Senate as a treaty. They know it would never get a two-thirds vote for approval, and probably not even a simple majority. Yet the Administration will cite Paris to justify sweeping environmental regulations to raise the cost of fossil fuels and subsidize renewable energy and electric vehicles. It will bypass Congress for much of this.
The economic damage will be real. A 2017 analysis of the Obama Paris commitments, by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Council for Capital Formation, predicted a $250 billion reduction in GDP and some 2.7 million lost jobs by 2025.
Meanwhile, China emitted nearly twice as much CO2 as the U.S. in 2018. Yet under Paris, Beijing gets a pass to increase its emissions until 2030. In 2020 China’s coal plants produced some 4,874 terawatt hours of energy—an increase of nearly 15% since it joined the pact, according to S&P Global Platts.
A new report by the nonprofit Global Energy Monitor highlights that “in 2020, China built over three times as much new coal power capacity as all other countries in the world combined—the equivalent of more than one large coal plant per week.” Last year Beijing also initiated more than 73.5 gigawatts “of new coal plant proposals,” five times as much as “the rest of the world combined,” the report says.
The U.S. generated an estimated 788 terawatt hours of coal-fired energy in 2020 as cheaper natural gas replaced coal. Thanks to natural gas—a fossil fuel—the U.S. has outpaced most of the world in reducing emissions, and in 2019 emissions reached their lowest level since 1992. Market forces, not Paris, drove that reduction.
Paris will have zero effect on the climate even if every nation meets its commitments. Mr. Biden will dispatch John Kerry, his climate envoy, to lobby China and everyone else to reduce emissions, which will also please President Xi Jinping. Mr. Xi will be happy to make promises about the future while demanding U.S. concessions today on Taiwan, trade and more. The Chinese Communists must sit back and marvel as they watch the U.S. undermine its own economic strength.
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